


An Epilogue for Randall

by broadwayturtle



Category: Monsters Inc (2001)
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Gen, Healing, Mental Health Issues, Past Child Abuse, Redemption
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-03
Updated: 2017-05-23
Packaged: 2018-07-11 23:59:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7076041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/broadwayturtle/pseuds/broadwayturtle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My take on why Randall became a villain, and how he redeems himself (with the annoyingly insistent help of his friends David and Archie) while banished to the human world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Emilia

**Author's Note:**

> So I read a really bad Monsters Inc fanfic a while back and felt I had to cleanse myself somehow. I did it by starting my own. Lol. Sorry that David and Archie aren't introduced yet; I'm a slow writer. They will be in the next chapter though!

_They will love you once you prove you're good enough._

That was his mantra, his life's goal.

 

_They will love you once you prove you're good enough._

 

* * *

 

 

"Mother?" A six-year-old Randall shook violently as he glanced around the basement, seeing nothing in the suffocating darkness. "Mother, can I come out now?"

"Are you ready to be a good boy?"

He thought he heard a ghostly whisper in his ear, but he stifled the sobs it threatened to create. Mother didn't like it when he mumbled.

"Yes!" He swallowed another lump in his throat and he sobbed out the words, making sure to enunciate them as well as he could. "Yes Mother, I promise, I won't ever disobey you again!"

He hugged himself with all four arms, trying not to think about ghosts or demons or humans, but nothing ever seemed to soothe his irrational fear of the dark. He hoped she would let him out soon.

The key clicked in the lock, and finally a crack of light shone through.

"Do you really?" Emilia Boggs' eyes squinted accusingly at him through the small opening, as though he had deeply offended her and she needed proof she could trust him again.

"Yes, I promise, I swear," he pleaded frantically, eyes wide. "I'll be a good boy! The best! Forever!"

A silence.

And then, and then-- _light_. Light, and his mother's open arms. He ran to them.

"Awww, poor _baby_." She hugged him and started petting his head in the comforting gesture that all mothers seem to do instinctively. He knew this part well. This was the part where he had permission to cry, so he finally allowed himself to break down and sob, burying his face into his mother's stomach.

"Poor, _poor_ Randall," she crooned. "I am _so_ sorry that you had to go through that again, but Mommy needs you to _learn_. Are you listening?" She always said that, to make sure she had an excuse to hit him if he didn't reply.

He nodded and hiccupped, holding her tighter. She kissed the top of his head, then continued petting it.

"I need you to take this to heart, okay? You _cannot_ be anything other than a scarer. Whatever silly _artistic_ \--" she snarled the word as though it were a mortal enemy-- "ideas that so-called _friend_ of yours forced into your mind, erase them. They are _useless_ to you. _She_ is useless to you. Are you listening?"

"Yes, m-mother," he stuttered, crying more quietly now.

She sighed. "I was lenient with you before, but honey, I don't think I can stand it any longer. I can't allow you to have... _friends--_ " she sneered as she said the word-- "anymore. All they do is try to turn you against me." She pulled him away from her gently and looked into his eyes as she wiped his tears. "Will you be a good boy and stop making friends?"

Randall looked down and away.

He didn't want to listen to her.

He _wanted_ friends.

But maybe she was right. Maybe they _were_ all liars. Maybe they didn't love him like she did. He thought about this, but mostly he thought about not having to go back into the basement again, and following her orders always bought him some time.

"...Okay."

His mother grinned with immense pride as she clasped her hands together, then sighed happily. "Oh!" She exclaimed, wiping a tear from her eye. "My sweet,  sweet boy. I knew you'd come 'round. What does Mommy always say?"

Little Randall looked up at her and smiled tentatively, repeating the phrase he'd been hearing since before he could even understand it.

 

_"Mommy loves Randall when Randall obeys."_


	2. Journey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Randall meets the bois™, finally! (Jk he only meets one because I'M A DANG SLOW WRITER I'M SORRY PLS ENJOY NONETHELESS)

Randall awoke sprawled across a tree equipped with a thick canopy of leaves that hid him from the passersby below. He took the extra precaution of finding this specific tree because his camouflage didn't work well when he was tired, and if there was anything he knew about humans, it was that they hated and destroyed anything unfamiliar or remotely scary; his aching bones were living proof. He'd never be able to look at a shovel without grimacing again.  
  
Slowly, gingerly, Randall pushed himself up and crawled through the trees. He'd managed to get a couple miles away from the crazy shovel lady and was now in a large park, though he had no idea where to go from there. He decided to just go forward through the protection of the trees, thanking the universe for providing him this one small mercy.

Before long, though, he realized he was starving, and took back the thanks he'd given the universe just minutes before. Randall cursed himself for allowing this situation to come about in the first place. How could he have let himself get so carried away by Waternoose? Why did such a horrible, selfish person's approval matter so much to him?

Saddened, he sighed and sat down on a branch, still feeling a stabbing pain in his stomach. Just when Randall was about to give up on real food and steel himself to eat some bird eggs he'd passed by earlier, he saw an empty picnic blanket below. Well, not empty, but near enough. A chubby boy sat guarding the items, playing a handheld videogame. He looked to be about 12 years old.

_Old enough to be just past a small child's age, but still young enough to have a wild imagination. Perfect._

Randall made sure to check for witnesses before scuttling down the tree, grabbing five sandwiches, and scuttling back up onto the nearest branch. Randall stared blankly at the horrified kid for a couple of seconds before being the first to break the silence. He squinted, then grinned mischievously.  
  
"They'll never believe you, kid."  
  
He quickly crawled higher until the leaves obscured him again, though he moved to a different tree for good measure. Wrapping his tail around the branch, he sat down and bit into one of the sandwiches.  
  
_Ugh_. _Egg salad_.  
  
\--  
  
Randall survived in this way for months, sleeping in sewers and trees and abandoned houses and farms full of acres and acres of corn. He stole food from convenience stores and from unsuspecting passersby, hitched rides on top of buses and cars, used his camouflage so much that he sometimes wondered if he really existed.

Eventually, Randall wound up somewhere in the mountains of California. It was as he was idly walking along the roads and treetops that he realized just how far he'd traveled and just how lost he still was. What was his goal in traveling across an entire country? Where was he supposed to go now? He couldn't go home; they hated him there. He couldn't stay here; after all, he was a monster in a place where "monster" was an insult, in a place where people like him were terrifying things to be screamed at and beaten half to death with a shovel. It was as he was deep in thought, padding along the driveway of some giant house in the middle of nowhere, that he was knocked over by a man on a bicycle. They tumbled right into the garage, both of them yelling loudly. The man must have pressed the button as he fell because the door unfolded neatly behind them. 

"Ohhhh..." Randall raised a hand to his aching head. A full minute of confused silence passed before either of them registered the gravity of the situation.  
  
"Holy shoot..." The human man spoke softly, green eyes wide with childlike awe, voice shaky with emotion. "Holy shoot... _it's a dragon_."  
  
Randall's half-lidded eyes snapped open as he realized the danger he was in. He quickly turned on his camouflage, bolting for the door to the house.  
  
"No, waiwaiwaiwait!"  
  
What possessed Randall to stop at that moment, he didn't know. He would later chalk it up to loneliness, to a desperate need for conversation after months of complete solitude. Whatever the reason, he stopped, hand hovering above the door handle.  
  
"It's ok, man..." His voice was gentle. Disarming. "I'm not gonna hurt you."  
  
Randall's entire body sagged as he retracted his hand from the door. He hadn't been spoken to that kindly in _decades_.  
  
"I won't hurt ya, little buddy." The sheer sincerity in those eyes made Randall feel so relieved that it hurt.  
  
The man shook a hand through long blond hair, looking worriedly around the room. His face broke into an open-mouthed grin when Randall finally reappeared.  
  
"Hey, big guy! How ya doin'?"  
  
Randall scratched the back of his neck, looking down shyly. The man's shoes had a dog pattern on them, he noted idly.  
  
"Um. Okay I guess. Three of my arms kinda hurt." The yelp that came next startled Randall. He jolted slightly, lifting his eyes just enough to look at this overexcited child of a man.  
  
"OHMYGOD, YOU _TALK_?!"  
  
"Well...yeah."  
  
" _OHMYGOD HI MY NAME IS ARCHIE SO NICE TO MEET YOU WHICH HAND DO I SHAKE?_ " Randall frowned in amusement and snorted, extending one of his middle hands, since it was closer to Archie's height.  
  
"Any hand I guess, heheh. My name's Randall."  
  
"Cooooooooooooool!" Archie shook Randall's hand with enthusiasm, bright green eyes smiling up at him all the while. "Oh man, oh man oh man. Dave is gonna be _psyched_. An actual dragon, an actual literal dragon, man I _knew_ you guys were real but no one believed me, oh man, oh wait, how rude, are you an actual dragon sorry for assumiiiinnnng?"  
  
"Uh. I'm...in human terms...I guess I'm closest to..." Randall squinted as he struggled to remember the word.

"...Chameleons? Or snakes maybe? We don't really have a word for it in my world. We're all just 'monsters'."

" _Awesome_!"  
  
"I suppose it might be, to a human. Can you stop shaking my hand now? It's weird."  
  
"Oh! Right!" The doorbell rang as Archie let go. He whipped his head to face the garage's doorway, his open-mouthed grin now as wide as it could be. "That must be Dave, let's go greet him!"  
  
Randall stepped to the side to let Archie pass, but made no move to follow him. When Archie noticed Randall wasn't following, he turned back around, beckoning eagerly.  
  
"Well, come on!" But Randall just stood there fidgeting.  
  
"I kind of don't want to--"  
  
"Oh... _oh_! Of course! I'm so sorry!" Archie's eyes widened in horror as he realized that not everyone might be as accepting as he was. "You're probably uncomfortable with people seeing you, since--hmm. Okay. Tell you what, you can do the thing, and I can let Dave in, and we can decide from there if you wanna be friends with Dave too, and if you do, you can, like, I don't know, like tap on my shoulder twice, and, but I promise, Dave is super nice and stuff, and he's a vet, so he's used to animals--not that I'm saying you're a regular animal or anything...I mean..." Archie sighed, then gestured his hands around wildly. "Do you know what I mean?"  
  
"Yeah. Tap twice if I want you to tell him I'm here."  
  
"Sound good, man?"  
  
"Yeah, I--I think so."  
  
"Cool!" Archie jogged to the door as Randall turned his invisibility back on.

Once Randall was safely out of sight, Archie turned and swung open the door with gusto.


End file.
